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A publisher based in Germany has announced Star Trek: Infinite Space, a browser MMO based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The game will be free-to-play, and it's planned for sometime in 2011. "Gameforge also contracted Michael Okuda, who served as scenic art supervisor for every live-action Star Trek series except for the original program, as a consultant. His wife Denise Okuda, who was a video supervisor and scenic artist for several of the sci-fi series' films and shows, will serve as a consultant, too."

From my experience with trying a lot of MMOs... yes it can. You don't even need to try hard to end up with something that sucks more ass than the toilets on the space station.

Add one of those "free to play" (but you need to pay a few hundred bucks just to get the same you'd get in the first month on WoW, and generally we'll try hard to make your character suck if you don't) setups, and it can really really suck.

And generally, don't underestimate how much room downwards there is in any domain. Just about any

ST:O was a solid game. It had fun moments, and I found it to be quite entertaining. Mainly the space combat though, the ground combat was horrific mainly due to the dumb as shit AI.

Apart from the dumb AI it suffered mainly from lack of variety. Once you'd hit max level (which you would do after about a month of casual play) there was bugger all to do. I hear it's changed a bit now and there is actual end-game content, but I've not gone back to play it since then.

What? Did you read your own comment? Anyone who describes a game to me like you just did with STO, I know I'd take a pass on that game. I regret I even played a month of STO because it was so shit. Yeah, space combat was fun until you realized it was the same damn thing over and over and over again.

Plus, did you know there were people who hit level cap before the game officially launched, essentially getting there in the two day head start period for those who pre-ordered? STO is not a solid game, but

Mainly the space combat though, the ground combat was horrific mainly due to the dumb as shit AI.

ST:O was something I was interested in at one point, and for a while I made a point of trying out most 'big' MMO releases, but I skipped this one.

With that said, how is their AI "dumb as shit" different than any other MMO? There hasn't been an MMO that I've played that has smart AI. All NPC's simply do is "aggro PC, take direct path between PC and NPC neglecting most boundary pathing and obstacle, and auto attack, cast spell/ability when not on cooldown".

It was a bastardized 3rd person shooter. You could use positioning and cover but it was awkward. You had 5 pets (bridge officers) who were supposed to help you out but they usually got stuck on some tree somewhere. The mobs would just all hit you and you had to figure out how to use your bridge officers as meat shield.
Had they tried something like a cheap version of a FPS it would have been great.
I had high hopes for STO. Sadly they botched the release (to early, 1 year would have given them time to fix

The moment I learned the same developer who had built City of Heroes was working on Star Trek Online I knew I'd never touch the game. From what I've seen of screenshots it almost looks like City of Heroes reskinned.

Not that City of Heroes was a completely bad game. What it did well, combat, it did extremely well. It was more engaging than almost any other MMO out there. And at release it offered a more robust character creation tool than any other MMO out there; it was exceedingly rare to see clones running

Disclaimer: I only did the demo for ST:O, and it didn't impress me enough to think of buying. Maybe it's all double rainbows in the paid version...

My problem with ST:O is twofold.

First, it didn't feel much like Trek. Here, Mr. Starfleet - take your phaser and kill X rebels. (Um.. don't these things have stun settings? Ones that knock people out and down, not debuff them?). Oh, and since everyone's shooting to kill, here's a Halo-brand shield to keep your ass alive. By the way, hope you picked tactical for

yeah, of all these browser-based MMO's coming out I wonder what engine they're using.It is an off-the-peg one like Unity, is it a converted-to-plugin like QuakeLive, or are they all building their own from scratch?I develop browser-based e-Learning (don't snigger) and we've seriously been looking into Unity.

I've played browser based MMOs. All HTML and JS, no plugins, all free(-ish).

The people with the biggest bank balances always win. This week's hot item is a red shirt of death, only $5, recover your health 1% faster. Next week's hot item is the blue shirt of death, only $6, recover your health 2% faster.

I played one where the richest player constantly begged the developers to make him the pink shirt of death with 50% health recovery. They sold it to him for $100. Rumour was he spent well over $2,000 to become top-dog.

as for the bank balance, i remember being absolutely pissed about the fact that in battlefield 2, people with the special forces expansion could use a sniper rifle which basically was a combo of the best bits of all others, giving them a noticable edge over me.

i did end up buying the expansion, partially for the improved weapons, but i ended up also really enjoying the extra maps

But microtransaction for better items will be a deal killer for me too

I don't mind so long as it's possible to earn the awards through play. There are times when I have more free time to play, other times my free time is non-existent. If I'm enjoying a game, I don't want to fall behind just because we have a few busy weeks at work, if I can offset that by laying out some cash then I see that as a reasonable alternative to grinding. I agree that the ones where cash buys equipment that's not otherwise available are evil, simply because I'd rather buy a game outright and know wh

Makes about as much sense as the original model, grind 100 hours for blue shirt of +1% health, then buy the expansion and grind 200 hours for grey shirt of 2% health etc.

I don't play any subscription or 'free to play' RPGs (I have a bit in the past). Giving an edge to people who pay isn't inherently less fair than giving it to whoever spends the most time playing. I tend to stick to games which give little if any advantage to either (beyond the increased knowledge of greater play time).

Giving an edge to people who pay isn't inherently less fair than giving it to whoever spends the most time playing. I tend to stick to games which give little if any advantage to either (beyond the increased knowledge of greater play time).

This is where I liked Guild Wars. If you didn't feel like getting the skills you wanted/needed you could buy them outright. Everyone could also get the best armor without too much trouble, but if you wanted to grind to get armor that had the same attributes but a better appearance you could do that too. That way your casual players don't get left in the dust and your hardcore players still get an ego boost from having different gear.

If a DS9 MMO implemented something similar I'd definitely give it a shot

Gameforge games are all flash based, at least the three or four I've played from them. I've always stopped playing for the same reason, too much advantage for the paying gamers (I can't stand it even as a paying customer myself).

I've always stopped playing for the same reason, too much advantage for the paying gamers (I can't stand it even as a paying customer myself).

Which is up to you. A fact is that 80% of our players don't pay anything at all and they seem to enjoy themselves just fine. As for the pay-advantages: Yes there are some. But most of them are of the meta-advantage type, like additional slots in building-queues, better overviews and such which means you don't have to check your status as often as without them.

Most of our paying customers get by very fine with 1-3 dollars worth of pay-features per month. For hours and hours of fun in return - a fair deal if you ask me.

As for those publishers taking 300$ from someone to put him at the top of the highscore list - that is shortsighted and stupid and pisses off your userbase beyond repair - which is why we don't do it. OGame has been running for approx. 7 years and still is a successful Browsergame for that very reason.

You start as DS9 Janitor, cleaning the bulkheads... then work your way up to waiter in Quarks bar. Eventually you earn enough experience to start crafting, such as becoming a seamstress in that cardassian tailor sweatshop. You can then work your way up in the tailoring guild to earn enough to purchase a bachelor suite on the officers deck (no more slumming around in the lower quarter with the pirates and refugees! [p]From there you will be able to purchase credits to use the replicators and make furniture f

Well, the 100 gross of self-sealing stem bolts was interesting. I had to trade a couple thousand wrappages of yamok sauce for those.
The epic quest is to obtain a 1951 Willie Mays rookie card. In order to get that you're gonna need to grind out the neodymium power cell, and the hardest part is the five liters of anaerobic metabolites suspended in a hydrosaline solution. That part requires you to steal a damned teddy bear.

I always wondered why there was so much gambling and why the Ferengi were so obsessed with making money in a universe with replicators. Surely replicators would pretty much eliminate most of the commercial sector, and gambling is all about the risk - take that away by allowing players to go replicate some more cash and where's the fun? Having said that, the last 15 years has gradually taught me that even where there is no scarcity to create value, governments will bend over backwards to artificially create

1.) Approximately 70% of our company is comprised of Nerds and Geeks, most of which are your Type A RPG, Comic, Star Wars and Star Trek fan. I can go on babbling all day about *anything* that interests me and I'll never get a stupid look, since nearly everybody knows what I'm talking about all of the time. Be it obscure Monty Python references or anything computer and software related. Or, as the case might be, SciFi stuff.

And since a lot of us are Trekkies, nobody here wants to screw this up. Every inhouse title goes through thorough inhouse play-testing, so the Trekkies will be all over the Product Team like a pile of bricks if they screw around with the StarTrek universe. It's convenient for this sort of thing that we *all* are in the same complex, 300 meters appart at most. From Alex (our CEO) and the upper Board across development and marketing all the way to Community Management.

2.) We actually know how to do Browsergames. We've raked in quite a few prestigious rewards and gained a solid reputation with our inhouse titles like Ikariam, Europe 1400, Wildfire and OGame and judging from the numbers they are *very* successful - and for good reasons too. I've been playing OGame and Wild Guns and both are solid fun right up to flat out addictive. We do have some not-so-spectacular acquired & redone B titles to fluff up the Portfolio, but even most of those astonishingly fun to play, although I really couldn't say why (play a round of Tanoth [tanoth.us] to see what I mean:-) )

Bottom line: We have a hoard of Trekkies right here on our team and we know how to make a fun game. IMHO that's a good foundation for building a neat DSN MMO.

For one there's just the problem with browser based MMOs seeming to universally suck. However also the fact that there's a lot of Trekkies is not a good thing IMO. Trekkies, or really anyone over devoted to a given universe/philosophy/whatever have a tendency to get a little dogmatic. Things have to be "right" above all else. Well in a game, that isn't how it should be. Things have to be fun above all else. That can mean some major changes to franchises sometimes. This is something people like Trekkies (ESP

I just hate it that you guys are german and not dutch (or the other way around, that i am not german), because if you were, my resume would land on your virtual doormat within seconds after reading this post

And thank the prophets it isn't on Facebook. I wonder if it will follow the show, and - if so - will it wade into the unmitigated awesome of the Relaunch series?
(Disclaimer: Switch awesome to failure if you didn't like DS9:Relaunch. I thought it was very well done, but that was me.)

When DSN came out it was the result of a rush-job(quickest to date in the industry at the time for a major series) by Paramount in an attempt at dealing with Babylon 5 and its perceived threat. As such, it was boring, inane, and the single worst Sci-Fi series by a major studio in the last couple of decades, with the possible exception of Andromeda.(The recent Flash Gordon series would have gotten third place, but it was mercifully killed off). Thankfully almost nobody under *40* remembers it, so for a

I'm sorry but you're spouting your opinion like it's fact. I'm well under 40 now and was obviously much younger when DS9 came out. I enjoyed the show and so did many of my friends that were Star Trek fans. The first series was admittedly a little slow, but got better as time went on. Towards the end of the DS9 run the Dominion storyline was excellent and truely gripping.

Just because it wasn't all flying round space blowing the shit out of people doesn't mean it was a bad show. You may feel that way but t

I'm sorry but you're spouting your opinion like it's fact. I'm well under 40 now and was obviously much younger when DS9 came out. I enjoyed the show and so did many of my friends that were Star Trek fans. The first series was admittedly a little slow, but got better as time went on. Towards the end of the DS9 run the Dominion storyline was excellent and truly gripping.

But the thing is, almost nobody who wasn't already a huge fan of the previous series actually gave a damn about DS9. It was purely a means

You assume a great deal here, such as who was and wasn't a fan of the show, and their attitude towards the previous series in the franchise. Sorry, but I seriously doubt you're in a position to make that sort of statement, unless you've met the majority of the world's people in person, or have managed to cut through the trolling, geekism, elitism and general mish-mash of opinions that appear on Internet forums.. The rest of your text becomes less relevant based on that fact. An MMO of Knightrider would be s

If you can't see why those are bad ideas and why an MMO based on DS9 has the potential to be good then I think you have a problem with reasoningI think you are the only person on the planet that failed to realize that I was being sarcastic there. That just shows how focused you are on defending your precious TV show at the expense of looking at the troubles that it has as a MMOG platform.

First, young kids who know nothing of the series will not play it. There's zero tie-in. Name me the demographic under

Wrong! Deep Space Nine was about a balding commander coming to terms with his lack of facial hair. By sheer willpower alone the hair on his head moved around his mouth and formed a formidable beard and mustache that would make the most hairy of Klingons envious. It was about the epic struggle of this commander against all those who defied his magnificent facial hair. The Bajoran religious caste feared that his manly beard would stand between them and their prophets. The Cardassians formed an alliance with the Jem'Hadar and the Dominion vouching they would bring order in the universe by building a giant space razor that would make faces as smooth as a babies bottom. There were even envious Ferengi running a bar to discover the secrets of the beard so they could sell them for a profit (Rule of Acquisition #485: Every beard has it's price). At some point in time even the Romulans got involved, with some ambassador yelling at him "It's a FAKE!". But then Garrack made sure his ship exploded and the Romulans finally understood the power of facial hair.

It was a magnificent 7 season tale of hairiness, manliness and the struggle of a man against the universe.

Well, it was nearly ten years ago since I saw the series, so the details are a bit vague. But man, BEST STAR TREK SHOW EVER!

Actually, at first I didn't like DS9 either. That was in '93. Lately I've gone back and watched the whole series and found that I really liked it, perhaps even as much as TNG or Voyager. DS9 really explores that whole personal side of ST well and exploits the "Its the 24th century and we're still having the same old problems" factor.

To be fair, sci-fi is about a lot more than hard science. I share your love for the hard stuff, however, some of the best sci-fi to be written, televised, or shown on the silver screen has little to none of it to claim.

The Next Generation had a lot of what I'd consider excellent sci-fi over the years, which really is all about asking "What if?" Their habit of activating the "plotyon device" to get out of a jam wasn't part of it.

Sci-fi is not the EM fields and quantum phenomena and not the techno-babble of Laforge. Sci-fi is about philosophy (triggered by imaginary things related to science), and the amount of philosophy in TNG vastly exceeds that in DS9.

DS9 was failing and then along came babylon 5... DS9 copied that genius of a show and invented the incredibly derivative 'arc' of the dominion war (whatever). The DS9 universe is so far from the STNG universe that it is almost in another dimension.

You'll pardon me for not taking the accusation too seriously. The only 'proof' he offers is that the shows came out at roughly the same time. Then he goes on to say that it's a big stunning coincidence that a Star Trek show would dare set itself on a space station, during a time when the ISS was big in the news, because we've never seen a Space Station on Star Trek or any other sci-fi series, right? Where choices did the next series have? Starship, colony, and... a space station.

DS9 was the proof of concept that you could have Trek without Ye Olde Starship. (I'm actually not fond of the Defiant, since it seemed like a copout on that front). Babylon 5 was proof of concept that you could have an overarching plot in place and tell a story over multiple seasons. Babylon 5 was also proof of concept that CGI would work in television (DS9 looks nicer because they're still using models until later in the series). Yeah, it looks dated, but so does o

You seriously liked Voyager? Okay it had Jeri Ryan but the writing was terrible, plots were often resolved with deus ex machina and there wasn't a single good actor. The philosophical and moral issues dealt with in TOS, TNG and DS9 were almost completely lacking.

I had the same problem with Voyager that I did with Enterprise - the characters I found interesting weren't the ones that were getting screen time. There were some very good episodes hidden in there, but too often it was another Archer/T'Pol or Janeway/Seven extravaganza...

I had the same experience. I didn't like DS9 initially and didn't make much of an effort to follow it. I don't recall at what point I did start following it but I found myself enjoying it immensely. I'd have to rate it up there with TNG and TOS.

There were two things I recall not liking about DS9 initially. Firstly, It felt a bit too much like a soap opera. Secondly, after having come from The Next Generation with all the exploration and variety of experiences DS9 felt extremely confined; it was almost like

Sisko made for an extremely charismatic leader; I'd say as good as Picard or Kirk in his own way.

Bullshit. Sisko was the most annoying ST captain ever, even moreso than Janeway. He started out just fine and then turned into a religious icon and nutjob. He reminds me of John Sheridan from Babylon 5 -- the messiah complex made both of them unbearable, IMHO. There were also plot holes in his character big enough to drive a Galaxy Class Starship through, like Captain Sisko being in command of a fleet of 600+ ships during the most pivotal battle in Federation history. Apparently all the Admirals were t

I'll grant the Prophet plotline got a bit wacky at the end (was pretty obvious they didn't really know where they were going with it), but as a Commander/Captain, I liked Sisko. Someone who a little bit wily, a little bit pragmatic, willing to get his hands dirty, but still had the core Starfleet idealism.

If anything, that's what made DS9 interesting - it was the Trek that showed what life was like outside the squeaky clean Starfleet.

The contrast of being "Starfleet" morally and trying to deal in a part of space where the closest others got to a Federation/Starfleet mind-set is talking about root beer, is part of what made the show great.

Its good to see how people have to deal with their ideals in a part of the galaxy that doesn't share them.

"Kind of Babylon 5-ish."They both came out about the same time, and I seem to remember reading somewhere that the guy who created B5, pitched it to CBS (I think, the network that owns ST) who rejected it. There's alot of bad blood between B5 and DS9 fans because of it. Also, Series 1 of DS9 aparentlly mirrors series 1 of B5

Similarities, yes, copy? No. It was Paramount at the time, before CBS bought them. Trek was always syndicated until the last one "Enterprise".
The guy who created B5 is also the guy who created the hit series Murder She Wrote, and B5 was very much along the lines of a 5 year whodunit. Not that
that is a bad thing, but DS9 was more about the characters themselves and how the Federation wasn't so 'perfect' as it was portrayed in previous series. Part of the enjoyment
I got from the series was how it pissed of

The very beginning of DS9 was almost directly copied from JMS' early scripts that he had pitched to Paramount. There's some old Usenet posts from JMS where, shortly some DS9 trailers come out, he noticed that the "goo-man" (Odo) was ripped directly from one of his early drafts from back then.

DS9's story arcs went a different direction eventually, and is better for it.

I disagree that Enterprise was better than Voyager. Voyager certainly had it's low points, but it was generally consistent all throughout. It was entertaining and occasionally showed a glimmer of what made the better shows so good.

Enterprise was quite lame for a good portion of its run. The final season was quite good, and I would agree even surpassed Voyager. But one season doesn't save what was an overall weak show.